March of the Dinosaurs (for iPad)

Great value for the price. Educational. Cool, rotatable virtual reality (VR) dinosaurs. Good video clips. Engaging story line. Contains animations not found in the film, descriptions, and other unique content.

Cons

Much of the app's content is not unique, having been used in a TV special.

Bottom Line

The exquisitely produced March of the Dinosaurs app is based on a National Geographic TV special, but has extra content and should be enjoyable whether or not you've seen the show.

Thanks to numerous fossil discoveries, as well as advances in CGI animation, producers of TV specials such as National Geographic's Escape of the Dinosaurs have done a credible job of reconstructing what life might have been like for those great beasts when they roamed the Earth. The March of the Dinosaurs iPad app ($1.99) takes the basic content of that show and enhances it with interactive virtual reality (VR) dinosaurs, textual descriptions of each species mentioned in the show, and more. The result is an exquisite story set in the Canadian Arctic in the late Cretaceous, which should be fascinating and enjoyable for people of all ages, whether or not they've seen the special on which it is based. All this earns it our Editors' Choice as an educational iPad app.

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The March of the Dinosaurs app was created by Touch Press, designers of the Editors' Choice educational iPad app, The Elements: A Visual Exploration, which we rated a rare 5 stars. It shares that app's high production value, including the use of VR, in its use of interactive 3D animations of dinosaurs and other creatures to illustrate how they might have walked, run, swum, and flown.

Life and Death in the Late Cretaceous The story follows the trek of a herd of Edmontosaurus, large plant-eating dinosaurs, from their arctic summer home (which was green and wooded in the app's late Cretaceous setting) to a more southerly location as the long polar night approaches. Much of the story in the app focus is on one young Edmontosaurus known as Scar, who is making his first such journey. On the way, they encounter predators from the air, water, and land—including the Gorgosaurus that gives Scar his signature disfigurement. They face hunger, a blizzard, rivers to cross, a mudslide, even a volcanic eruption. Scar gets separated from the herd, and after many adventures, is reunited with them.

The narrative also tells the stories of two dinosaurs that winter in the Arctic: Patch, a young male Troodon—a small predator akin to Velociraptors—who is looking to attract a mate; and a female Ankylosaurus, an armored plant-eating dinosaur, who is foraging for food and trying to evade predators.

The story line, coupled with illustrations, text, videos, and animations, is simple, yet engaging enough to be of interest to both children and adults. Very young children might be frightened by some of the encounters with predators, as well as the natural disasters depicted in the app, so parents should exercise discretion in showing it to them.

The app's home screen is an illustration of the dinosaurs' journey, with links to the story's 12 chapters, numbered and titled, appearing at appropriate places on the map. You can click on a chapter of your choice, or start at the first one and work your way through, scrolling page by page, chapter by chapter. On the home screen are four buttons. The one labeled Back takes you to your previous page. A button with a speaker icon toggles the sound on and off. (Not only is there text on each page of the story, but you can listen to it being narrated as well.) The button labeled Begin the Story takes you to the beginning of Chapter 1, Summer in the Arctic.

Meet the Dinosaurs Clicking on the Meet the Dinosaurs button takes you to a page labeled The Creatures, which shows animations of 11 different animals, slowly spinning as they walk, swim, or fly. They include all of the creatures you encounter in the story: young and mature Edmontosaurus; male and female Troodons; the Ankylosaurus (Edmontonia); a Pachyrhinosaurus (sort of like a one-horned Triceratops); two land predators (Gorgosaurus and Albertosaurus); a pterosaur (Quetzalcoatlus, the largest known creature ever to fly); and a sea monster (Prognathodon). Last but not least is a tiny opossum. These animations are exquisite and are themselves worth the price of the app.

You can click on any creature for a close-up view with some basic information about it: name; meaning (of name); weight; length; and diet. At the top of the screen is a small graphic showing all 11 creatures shown in the app, with a human drawn for scale. The dinosaur whose page you're on is highlighted in red. Touching your finger to the screen stops the animation, and if you slowly move your finger in either direction, you can watch the dinosaur slowly move, stride by stride.

Along the bottom of the screen of each page highlighting an individual creature are buttons: Back takes you to whatever page you came from; The Dinosaurs takes you to the Creatures page; an Animation icon, lit in red, tells you that you're on an animation page. A Video icon, showing a film camera, takes you to clips from the story section, while an icon showing text takes you to a page-long account of the beast, with a description, an account of its discovery, and information about its diet. An icon with the Wolfram logo takes you to the WolframAlpha page about the dinosaur. To the right are three more icons: a House icon, which takes you to the app's home page, and two sets of dinosaur tracks, one pointing backward, the other forward, which take you through the pages on each dinosaur represented in the app.

Bringing the Past to Life Based on my own experience, you certainly don't need to see the TV special on which March of the Dinosaurs was based to appreciate the app. Whether you would want to buy the app if you (or your family) have already seen the show, and particularly if you own the DVD, is a more difficult call, but I would say yes. The app does provide some extra content, including the exquisite dinosaur animations, and is available at a moderate price.

The Cretaceous period is in Earth's distant past and although we'll never know exactly what it was like, scientists and artists have banded together in an attempt to recreate that bygone era and the great beasts that roamed its forests and plains. The March of the Dinosaurs app brings that era to life with an engaging story populated by magnificent, and in some cases terrifying, creatures. It only includes a representative slice of all the species of that era, but does a fine job in showing and describing, based on our best information, how they lived. This app is a winner for students and dinosaur lovers of all ages, and earns our Editors' Choice nod as an educational iPad app.

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As Analyst for printers, scanners, and projectors, Tony Hoffman tests and reviews these products and provides news coverage for these categories. Tony has worked at PC Magazine since 2004, first as a Staff Editor, then as Reviews Editor, and more recently as Managing Editor for the printers, scanners, and projectors team.
In addition to editing, Tony has written articles on digital photography and reviews of digital cameras, PCs, and iPhone apps
Prior to joining the PCMag team, Tony worked for 17 years in magazine and journal...
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